Death Is Death
by Uozumi
Summary: Kirk can’t quite leave a soaked Chapel to hypothermia one early winter night.


**Fandom** Star Trek AOS  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)** James Kirk, Christine Chapel; implied Chapel/Corby  
**Genre** Drama  
**Rating** PG-13  
**Word Count** 613  
**Disclaimer** Star Trek c. Paramount, CBS, NBC, Roddenberry.  
**Summary** Kirk can't quite leave a soaked Chapel to hypothermia one early winter night.  
**Warning(s)** implied violence and/or dubious scientific practices. It's kind of up for grabs.  
**Notes** So I watched "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" on WNDY and my brain picked up on the line "when I was in your class" from Chapel to Corby and the fact they were once engaged and then my brain ran with it. I mention ice storm advisories because various Trek series mention how the Earth isn't as polluted any longer in their timeline. So, this goes on the theory that once humanity rids itself of global warming, we will go back to global cooling and eventually resume "the little ice age." I also list pairings alphabetically, so don't look for it to clarify dom/sub. I blame (in a puppies and kitties kind of way) inell for being unable to imagine Kirk in anything less than a motorbike during his academy days.

_**Death Is Death**_

She ran out into the night in a random direction and now was walking in an area of campus that did not even have a sidewalk. Her hair clung to her in a mass of brown and blonde ringlets. Her dress clung to her and her bare feet were almost numb in the cold early winter rain. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried not to think of the potential ice storm advisories in effect. She could hear a motor approaching and kept close to the gutter.

"Need a lift?"

Christine Chapel looked over her shoulder without turning her body. Sitting on his motorbike in what looked like a warm jacket and decent boots was James T. Kirk, a loud upstart from a sophomore level course she took the year before. Her head turned back to face ahead of her. "I can make it." Make it where, she was not sure, but she could do it. She continued walking.

Kirk followed excruciatingly slow on his motorbike. He might be an infamous playboy on campus, but he was not jerk enough to just leave her out here to freeze. Either that or Bones was starting to rub off on him. Kirk could almost hear his friend now ranting on about hypothermia and a medical student should know better. Shaking his head to clear it and get the rain out of his eyes, Kirk tried again, "You know, the medical building is the other way."

Chapel continued walking. She knew that if she did not take him up on his offer, she would need some sort of medical attention. She also did not bring anything else with her when she left the small house. It was stupid, she knew, but she had to get out of there and away from Roger too fast to bother with anything else. She bit her lip more in concentration than withholding emotions. "I don't want to go there." She did not want her classmates and colleagues to see her like this. She was Christine Chapel who could handle anything, but it was tempting to take him up on his earlier offer of a lift. He did not seem in a hurry to buzz off somewhere else. She glanced at him through the rain. "I'm not easy." At least not with men like Kirk who probably had lurking STDs and a prerogative to have a different partner once the current partner proved boring or unavailable.

"I'm not here for sex," Kirk replied. His eyes held her gaze as he brought the bike to a halt. The longer he continued beside her, the more he knew who she was. He could barely remember her from class, but he could remember overhearing Gaila mention a nursing student who was living with one of the professors. The concern the Orion had for this nursing student was part of what kept Kirk here in this stupid rain. "Besides," he leaned back a little, "getting more than one hypospray for anything is a pain. Who wants to go through that?"

"Hyposprays aren't that bad," Chapel responded and turned to face him. She stopped walking and scrutinized him. She was not about to create another situation in which she had no control. She was far too intelligent to just jump from one dangerous male to another. Yet, she needed somewhere dry to stay or she really would be in comparable trouble to what she was running from. Death was death, and her options were slim. "Alright." She approached the idling motorbike. "Get me out of this rain."

Kirk nodded and once she had her arms securely around his waist, he took off into the night.

**The End**


End file.
